PTI's march for Imran Khan's release, from Lakki Marwat toward Swabi, and the emergency Islamabad answered it with: where it went each day, who joined, how many actually showed up, and where the news reports disagree.
Talks between PTI and the federal government collapsed early on Sunday, each side blaming the other over who should control counter-terrorism policy in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. By the afternoon the party had decided to march regardless, north along the Indus Highway from its southern heartland towards the motorway at Swabi.
Chief Minister Sohail Afridi arrived by helicopter and launched the march from Gandi Chowk, where police on the ground put the crowd at between 8,000 and 15,000. He told them he would accept neither governor's rule nor an emergency. Further down the highway, a second convoy led by Ali Amin Gandapur set out from Dera Ismail Khan to join him.
The D.I. Khan convoy, the largest contingent of the day, got no further than Yarik Toll Plaza. Gandapur said police had invoked Section 144 and, after hours of waiting, sent his supporters home rather than put them at risk; the governor later insisted no such order was in force there. Only Aaj News reported that the convoy joined the march.
At the Bannu–Karak border, where supporters from Bannu fell in behind him, CM Sohail called the march "a Test match that will become a T20 in two days". The convoy reached Karak close to midnight and camped at Jail Chowk. By then, police said, the thousands of the afternoon had thinned to a few hundred, and the town's mobile networks had been switched off.
After a morning address in Karak the convoy climbed the Indus Highway to Kohat, where a large crowd met it and the marchers bedded down at a football ground in Lachi. In Islamabad, ministers began to speak openly of governor's rule; Bilawal Bhutto called the idea an "atomic bomb".
Contingents from Hangu, Kurram and Orakzai, the districts to the west, joined the main body after a rally at University Chowk, though no outlet attempted a count. CM Sohail then changed the route: the march would go to Khyber first and Peshawar after, and would be called off, he said, if any of its demands were shown to be unconstitutional.
From an overnight camp at Mattani the convoy turned west into Bara, CM Sohail's home tehsil. There he said he had been offered Imran Khan's medical care in return for endorsing a new military operation, and had refused "as long as I am chief minister". The march's decision point moved from Khairabad to Swabi, and that night Khyber and much of Peshawar lost their mobile signal.
A convoy from Landi Kotal came down the Khyber Pass to meet the march at Bara, and the Peshawar High Court served CM Sohail a notice over his use of the official helicopter. The main body was due at Hayatabad Toll Plaza at two and arrived after six, to a crowd its own party described as hundreds, before winding through the city to Bhana Mari.
Across the Indus, Punjab shut its side. Containers and spiked barriers went up on Attock Bridge and the Khushal Garh bridge on the Kohat road, sandbags and containers at the Haro bridge by Burhan Interchange, checkpoints at the Chach and Ghazi interchanges, and some 2,000 containers ringed Islamabad. Federal ministers said the march would enter neither Punjab nor the capital.
After an address at Bakhshi Bridge the convoy left Peshawar for Charsadda, and the city's mobile service came back behind it. At Shabqadar Chowk CM Sohail invited supporters from across the country to gather at Swabi Interchange, and warned of "a spectacle on the roads every day" until justice was done. Governor Kundi dared him to cross Swabi. The night was spent at Razar Ground.
The convoy came in from Charsadda through Tangi and Sardheri and stopped at Chamtar, where CM Sohail addressed crowds at the adda and in Manga Bazaar before the march bedded down in the unfinished bus terminal on Charsadda Road. Any governor's rule or emergency, he said, would send people to Peshawar rather than Swabi, and he told his lawmakers to have hundreds of workers each ready. In Islamabad, by sources, the president and prime minister had already agreed to the emergency.
Sunday brought the answer from Islamabad. The federal cabinet recommended an emergency and governor's rule for Khyber Pakhtunkhwa under Articles 232 and 234, and President Zardari signed it the same day: the chief minister and his ministers are out of office and Governor Kundi now holds the province's powers. Reports had spoken of twelve districts; the proclamation covers the whole province. CM Sohail had said he would not accept an "illegal move". The convoy is still in Mardan, and what it does next has not yet been reported.
Before the proclamation the schedule, revised four times, had the convoy at Swabi Interchange on the 13th with convoys from Peshawar, Malakand and Kohat, Hazara, Bannu and D.I. Khan a day later, and a "final plan" announced there; CM Sohail had hinted the march would go beyond Swabi. The dates conflict across outlets, from the 11th to the 13th. With governor's rule in force, his own stated alternative is a gathering in Peshawar. The dashed line is the plan as last published, not a prediction.
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